PICC P&C Suffered Shrinking Market Share

This January, Hong Kong-listed PICC Property and Casualty Company Limited (PICC P&C, 2328.HK), saw the market share shrink to 37.2%, compared with the figure of 38.23% in the previous year.

Single-month property insurance premiums of PICC P&C amounted to CNY 18.3 billion, according to the industry regulator China Insurance Regulatory Commission (CIRC). This January, the Beijing-based non-life insurer was the No.1 property insurance company in Shanghai and the No.2 property insurer in Shenzhen.

Currently, Ping An Property & Casualty Insurance Company of China (Ping An P&C) and China Pacific Property & Casualty Insurance Co. (CPIC P&C) take the second and third places in domestic non-life insurance market, with the market share of 17.97% and 13.62% respectively. Based in the southern boomtown Shenzhen, Ping An P&C has made effort in developing the telephone sales and online sales channel.

It is still a long way for Ping An P&C and the financial center Shanghai-based CPIC P&C to catch up with PICC P&C in the smaller cities and rural market. However, the consumers in those large cities are willing to accept new things; therefore, the first- and second-tier cities will be the major battlefield for these major companies to compete with one another.

Data of China Insurance Regulatory Commission (CIRC) showed that the premium revenues of the country's life insurance sector reached CNY 122.4 billion in January 2011, a year-on-year increase of 2.88%. Shanghai-based China Pacific Life Insurance Co. (CPIC Life), the life insurance arm of China Pacific Insurance (Group) Co., gained the life insurance premiums of CNY 11.7 billion in the month, with the market share rising from 8.66% to 9.55%, thus ranking No.3 among those life insurance companies in the country.

With premiums of CNY 11.1 billion and the market share of 9.05%, Beijing-based New China Life Insurance Co. followed CPIC Life as the No.5; and PICC Life Insurance Limited took the place of Taikang Life Insurance to take the fifth place among all of the China's Mainland-based life insurers. In January, PICC Life reaped the premiums of CNY 9.4 billion and realized the market share of 7.7%.

26 out of these life insurance companies saw the negative premium growth this January. They include Ping An Life Insurance, PICC Life Insurance, Taiping Life Insurance, AIA China, Huatai Life, Huaxia Life Insurance Co., Generali China Life Insurance, Aviva-COFCO Life Insurance and so forth. Based in the southern boomtown Shenzhen, Ping An Life suffered the sharpest negative growth of 6.87% or a decrease of CNY 3 billion.